Tag - regime change

Is it really Erdogan versus Gulen or is Gulen a proxy?Images: Wikicommons

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan faces major challenges from the opposition and within his own party, the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party). Through his rash actions and compulsive need for control, the PM has paved the road to his political demise. He may fall as a result of the current scandal or his exit may be somewhat delayed. In either case, things will be very ugly in Turkey before PM’s not so long good-bye is over. This will be at the expense of the Turkish people, who have done nothing to deserve this.

On December 17, Turkish police and prosecutors brought corruption charges against members of Erdogan’s cabinet and some of their family members. The charges came after a nationwide investigation of political corruption. As police in Ankara rounded up suspects, the Istanbul police chief refused to arrest 30 of those charged in that city.

Erdogan responded in a manic fit by firing prosecutors and key police investigators involved in the arrests. Then, the PM went on the attack with a blistering series of invectives aimed at the opposition Republican Peoples Party (CHP), other outsiders, and the U.S. Ambassador. The death of a key Turkish corruption investigator in Ankara added fuel to speculation on the intensity internal politics surrounding the PM.

The assumption is that the more Iranians suffer, the more their leaders will feel the pressure and either change course or be overthrown in a popular uprising. And yet, there is no evidence to suggest that this is probable, and the Iraqi case suggests the opposite. During the U.N. blockade, Saddam was able to blame foreigners for the nation’s suffering, and ordinary Iraqis—those who might have been expected to show discontent at his misrule—grew more and more dependent on the rations he distributed. Furthermore, America’s insistence that an end to sanctions was conditional on Saddam’s departure removed any incentive he might have had to cooperate with U.N. weapons inspectors. In 1997, he stopped doing so, with the results we all know.

This time, the U.S. is at pains to show that the Islamic Republic will gain a life-saving reprieve if it falls in with U.N. resolutions calling on it to stop enriching uranium. If that happens, Hillary Clinton said in October, sanctions might be “remedied in short order.” But Iran’s supreme leader dismissed her words as a “lie.”

Khamenei and those around him believe that sanctions policy is part of a bigger American project of Iraq-style regime change. There is some logic to this; recent western tactics against Iran include sabotage, assassination and diplomatic isolation—hardly indicative of a desire for detente. The most recent round of nuclear negotiations foundered, in part, on Iran’s growing conviction that the U.S. will make no significant concession on sanctions unless Iran drastically scales down its program of uranium enrichment. That seems unlikely to happen–not simply for reasons of image and prestige, but because, as American hostility sharpens, Iran may judge its nuclear program to be the best defense it has against the fate that befell Saddam.